Under Trump, the United States is openly disregarding international law, harming allies as readily as adversaries. … Europe, instead of recalibrating its interests, remains politically paralysed, unable to act independently or protect its own security and economic foundations. – R. Jagannathan
Barely one year after the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the United States of America increasingly appears to fit the definition of a “rogue state”, and Europe is emerging as a “dumb orphan” unable to separate its own core interests from foolish political posturing.
Hegemons usually do not need to break the rules, for most rules would have been made by themselves in their interest. When they do break their own rules, they claim high principle as motivating their actions, for example the US invasion of Iraq based on dubious intelligence, ostensibly to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, or NATO’s 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia without UN approval, ostensibly to prevent the Serbs from ethnically cleansing Kosovars, to name just two instances.
Usually, though, hegemons just promise something, promises they do not intend to keep, and then do what they anyway want to do at some later time, when it is more opportune. An example of the latter is NATO’s promise not to expand “one inch further” if the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to let East Germany merge with the West in 1990–91.
German unification expanded NATO indirectly, but we now know that this promise was not intended to be kept. It was repeatedly broken as Russia weakened further before the rise of Vladimir Putin in 1999. The underlying reason for the Ukraine war that began in 2022 is because there was talk of Ukraine joining NATO, something that crossed Putin’s deep red lines on Russian security.
However, if these transgressions of global law and abandonment of solemn promises did not get Uncle Sam the label of “rogue state”, Trump has now managed to acquire it by his mindless actions. For the last several weeks, the US military has been bombing fishing vessels in the Caribbean, claiming that they were ferrying drugs.
Recently, it has also sought to blockade tankers bound for Venezuela. Earlier this week, Trump appointed an envoy to Greenland, claiming that it is vital to US security. Greenland is loosely a part of Denmark, a key member state of the European Union and NATO.
That both these moves, the boat strikes in the Caribbean and the Greenland gambit, are indicative of rogue action beyond the scope of international law becomes clear as the United Kingdom, one of Uncle Sam’s closest allies, has stopped sharing intelligence about Caribbean drug trafficking. The UK obviously believes that its ally is breaching international law. Denmark, one of the founding members of NATO, has strongly protested the US decision to appoint an envoy to Greenland.
A “rogue state” can be defined as one that not only has no respect for international law, but also does not care about who it is hurting, friend or foe. The US under Trump is clearly choosing to become one, drunk as it is on military and economic power.
What is galling, however, is the European inability to define its own interests. Till recently, as a junior ally of the US in NATO, it went along with all US demands, even if they went against its own interests. Germany, the defeated nation in the Second World War, willingly or unwillingly became part of the repeated US deceptions after 1990.
In an open letter to Chancellor Friedrich Merz on 17 December 2025, Jeffrey Sachs, Director of Columbia University’s Centre for Sustainable Development, pointed out that the security of Europe cannot be separated from the security needs of Russia, and that Germany was complicit in creating the conditions for the Ukraine war.
Ukraine, which rejected compromise offers for peace soon after the war began in February 2022, based on promises of European and American financial and military support, is now on the verge of losing the war after sacrificing the lives of thousands of its citizens and courting the complete destruction of its cities and critical infrastructure.
Under US pressure, Germany and Europe denied themselves cheap Russian natural gas, effectively destroying the competitiveness of Europe’s economic engine and seeing energy prices go through the roof for everybody.
Earlier in December, the European Union shot itself in the foot once more by deciding to freeze €210 billion of Russian assets, most of them owned by the Central Bank of Russia. The latter then sued Euroclear, which holds these assets, for damages in a Russian court. No prizes for guessing which way the verdict will go, though there can be questions about how any verdict will be enforced in courts outside Russia’s jurisdiction.
The EU effectively backed the theft of sovereign assets and destroyed trust in the global financial system by freezing central bank assets, which sends a chilling message to all countries about how trustworthy these so-called “rules-based” Western financial institutions are. Russia, Iran and Venezuela are already sanctioned. Who is to know which country will be next.
One wonders what Europe gains by attracting litigation in multiple courts, especially since the possibility that all courts in other jurisdictions will uphold its decision to freeze sovereign assets cannot be a 100 per cent certainty.
What Europe has effectively done is ensure that no peace is possible, and it has done this by sending out a loud message to the world that Western financial institutions cannot be trusted if you fall foul of their political intentions.
Europe is messing up its own options at a time when the US is no longer a trustworthy mentor and superpower.
The rogue state’s foolishness in undermining the global rules-based order is now matched by the stupidity of its own former vassal states in Europe. – TheJaggi & Swarajya, 24 December 2026
›R. Jagannathan is former Editorial Director, Swarajya.
Filed under: EU, UK, USA, world | Tagged: donald trump, EU paralysis, geopolitics, security of europe, US imperialism |
BHARATA BHARATI 